Question

i want to build a chat application which supports text messaging, group messaging, file transfer(like netmeeting). when i send it over TCP socket i saw that data is not structured all the data send as string over TCP. I want to send it in a structured way with few headers like name:,ip:,data:,data_type_flag:(file or text message) etc… one stackoverflow member told me to use TELEPATHY but i can’t get a simple tutorial to understand. how can i send structured data over socket? or can any one suggest me a good tutorial to implement telepathy properly. i want to communicate over network as peer-to-peer rather than dedicated server.. Thanks

Answer 1

Try google protcol buffers or apache thrift. There are many examples for how to use them.

As for your comment about “peer to peer”, please realize that even in peer-to-peer one of the peers is always acting as a server (sometimes both are).